Hi Don, Yes, my thinking is they may have feared problems and opted for the adhesive, but I'm only guessing. Wouldn't have been my first choice for this piece of kit. I don't think you can get this stuff off one joint at a time, but definitely one component at a time which is what I have done. The adhesive is physically between the component and the pads and unless the component is removed you won't be able to clean up the pad ready for soldering. After all this messing about with these SMD's it is probably better fitting new parts anyway, otherwise you may well be back into the intermittent fault situation fairly quickly. Kind regards, Thomas. Message: 6 Date: Wed, 19 Jul 2017 18:16:42 -0600 From: djl <djl@montana.com> To: Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement <time-nuts@febo.com> Subject: Re: [time-nuts] 5370B Input Board Repair [WAS: 5370B Question / help needed] Message-ID: <2138b5104f5a250430c2ed46a755dff5@blackfoot.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Could it be that someone thought adhesive would be less prone to cracking from stress than solder? Also, do you think that the adhesive could be cleaned one end at a time and replaced with solder? I'm admittedly too lazy to look/try just now. Don

> Could it be that someone thought adhesive would be less prone to > cracking from stress than solder? More likely, it was a process decision. They most likely wave-soldered the board, but the switch side has gold-plated switch contacts, so they couldn't wave-solder that side. So, to put a few components there, they used the adhesive. (The alternative would have been to hand-solder SMD parts on that side, and I'm not aware that HP ever did that.) Best regards, Charles